The Image Fulgurator is a project by Julius von Bismarck. Here is his description:

The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards.

In principle, the Fulgurator can be used anywhere where there is another camera nearby that is being used with a flash. It operates via a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected on an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it. The intervention is unobtrusive because it takes only a few milliseconds. Every photo another photographer takes of an object at which the Fulgurator is also aimed is affected by the manipulation. Hence visual information can be smuggled unnoticed into the images of others.

Video of the first test of an image fulguration in public.
Context:
This video shows an Intervention at the Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. (former border of east and west Germany) The target of the manipulation was the famous “YOU ARE ENTERING THE AMERICAN SECTOR” – sign.
The manipulation created a link from the former East / West border to the US / Mexican border in order to reimagine the dramatic situation at worldwide borders today. The massage was addressed to the tourists on location, that can travel easily over every border without risking there life.

One Response to “Image Fulgurator”

[…] part of Berlin’s Transmediale. On show, amongst many was Julius von Bismarck with his Image Fulgurator and Pieter passionately talking to me about it. Of course, Pieter has covered it as he does always […]